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Jugged Hare

A hare stew cooked with bacon, onion, flour, cornflour, stock, and seasonings, then sealed and baked.

From an old cookbook · modernised transcription
From a historical cookbook (Internet Archive) · 18 ingredients
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Why it works: Thyme and parsley match in chemistry and in kitchens. They rank in the top 1% of all ingredient pairs, and cooks put them together in 9,057 recipes. Both carry cuminaldehyde, which smells Spicy, cumin. The science ↓

Jugged Hare

Oven, in the book's wordsA moderately hot oven

Ingredients

Directions

The book says “a moderately hot oven”. The 350°F (175°C) in the steps is the modern equivalent, not the book's own figure.

Prepare the hare

  1. Skin and wash the hare thoroughly.

  2. Dry the hare and cut it into small pieces.

Brown and make the sauce

  1. Melt the dripping in a stewpan.

  2. Add the hare, bacon, and onion to the pan.

  3. Fry until browned.

  4. Drain the meat on paper.

  5. Place the drained meat in a jar or gourmet boiler.

  6. Stir the flour and cornflour into the pan. Cook for a few minutes.

  7. Gradually add the stock. Let it boil and thicken.

  8. Season with salt, spices, and pepper. Add the celery seed, thyme, parsley, lemon juice, and browning sauce. Simmer for 15 minutes.

  9. Strain the sauce over the meat.

  10. Seal the jar with a dough made of flour and water.

Cook and serve

  1. Place the sealed jar in a pan of boiling water.

  2. Cook in a 350°F (175°C) oven for 3 hours.

  3. Arrange the meat on a hot dish.

  4. Strain the sauce over the meat. Add port, sherry, or claret to the sauce before straining.

  5. Garnish with herb forcemeat balls.

  6. Serve with red-currant jelly.

Recipe from a historical cookbook (Internet Archive).

Transcribed from a scanned cookbook and modernised for today's kitchens. Where the book gave no heat or time, or said "a moderate oven", the temperatures and times here may be modern equivalents rather than the book's own figures.

Explore the science

The flavor team

The pairs that carry this dish. Each one is judged two ways: how much their aromas overlap, and how often cooks already put them together.

  1. Thyme + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together9,057 recipes

    Shared aroma: cuminaldehyde (Spicy, cumin).

  2. Parsley + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together14,037 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  3. Thyme + lemontop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together3,973 recipes

    Shared aroma: beta-phellandrene (minty, terpene).

  4. Celery + parsleytop 1% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together6,810 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

  5. Pepper + parsleytop 2% of all pairs
    Smell alikestrong
    Cooked together34,122 recipes

    Shared aroma: 4'-methylacetophenone (bitter almond).

Ranks compare each pair with 20,000 random ingredient pairs on CompKitchen. How we score pairs

What each ingredient does

Hare
Provides the main meat, which becomes tender through long, slow cooking in its sauce.
Flour
Thickens the sauce with starch and helps it set into a rich, cohesive gravy.
Cornflour
Adds thickening power to the sauce, giving it a smooth, glossy body.
Dripping
Carries the frying heat and adds savoury richness that browns the meat.
Bacon
Adds fat and salty, smoky flavour that deepens the sauce.
Onion
Softens and sweetens as it fries, adding aromatic depth to the sauce.

The step that matters

Browning the meat. Frying the hare until well browned develops savoury flavours through the Maillard reaction, which gives the finished sauce its depth. Pale meat yields a flatter, less rich result.

Swap the onion

How well each one fits the dish's main ingredients (flour, pepper, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce):

  1. Shallotfits better
  2. Carrotfits better
  3. Parsnipfits better
  4. Onionthe original

Fit is the average pairing score against flour, pepper, celery, thyme, parsley, lemon, sauce. Candidates are from the same food group and used in at least 100 recipes.

“What each ingredient does” and “The step that matters” were written by Claude from this recipe’s own method and reviewed in samples by CompKitchen.

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